@@YTmokey42, yes. Thanks to the great, and very configurable, bots, the Unreal Torunaments/Unreal Championships games will always be very playable, allowing you to play on the map that you choose, with the skill level that you choose, with the mutators that you choose, and using the mods that you choose, and the bots won't cheat, or quit the game when they are losing, or deliberately shoot their own team. Plus the Unreal Tournament games on the PC have countless new maps, new mutators, new game-play modes, new mods, etc, making sure that the games never become boring. I always install UT 1999 and UT 2004 whenever I get a new PC or laptop. Utterly timeless games.
personally i'd put UT99 at nr 1 above everything else but other than that spot on ranking. there's just something about the aesthetic of UT99 that no other game has ever managed to reproduce in gaming history (let alone within the unreal franchise). the fast paced gameplay, the simplicity, the limitless possibilities, the maps (which i think are the best in the series), even the tournament campaign... and the soundtrack?? imo the best soundtrack in gaming history. nothing beats the dnb jungle inspired ost of it.
I've never felt like Epic is the kind of company that cares about its games or its legacy or is capable of any kind of sentimentality. They only care about the product that makes them the most money at the time, which is why they already abandoned Unreal Tournament after Gears of War became popular, and had ditched Unreal proper even before that.
They abandoned Unreal for Unreal Tournament, ironically. There was an Unreal Tournamente in development in 2016 but it was ditched for Fortine and it's all they care about now.
Welll that's not completely true. They still attempted another proper Unreal (Unreal 2) after the success of Tournament, but it was a shitty sequel, no wonder it was gonna fail. Similarly, they made UT3 after Gears of War, which also has the same story, it was a subpar sequel.
I think the thing that really stings is pulling all the Unreal games from all digital storefronts. It really comes off as being ashamed of their legacy and not wanting people to try out their older titles, maybe they did it to try and curb search results for Unreal to always point towards the newest version of the engine? Even still it wasn't necessary to delist them. Should have just made them entirely, officially free to download instead. Edit: I am technically wrong! you can still buy and play Unreal Championship 2 on the Xbox Series, it's still on the store there.
Unreal Championship 2 was a precursor to the "hero shooter" genre. The added melee combat that actually was useful should have been integrated into the following games.
When the light-medium-heavy class mentioned, automatically the TF2 and Overwatch came to my mind. It's sad that that UT had the potential even for the future generations but it's never happened, instead we got a Fortnite, somehow :\
My memorable moments with the series: UT99: Minigunning an opponent upwards on Morpheus. He just flies higher and higher until you run out of ammo. UT99: Accidentally falling from a great height and landing on a bot, killing him while surviving myself. The killfeed didn't know what to write except "[my player] killed [opponent]" Unreal: A kind of melodramatic, almost sad feeling after finishing the game for the first time. "Okay, so what am I going to do now?" UT2004: LAN party with 5-6 other guys on Phobos. Everyone running around on the roof (for some reason) trying to kill each other. One player wipes everyone out with the Ion Cannon. Everyone laughs at getting killed. UT99: Discovering modern remixes of the soundtrack, particularly Necto Ulin's work.
For me Unreal Gold was one of the first games i played in my life, i really enjoyed that game and still do especially the story mode and the last unreal game that i got to play was ut99, these 2 games have a special place in my heart
i just played ut2004 but against bots. its my favourite game because back in 2004 my family only had dial up so i never gamed online. but ut2004 game me a online game experience without internet. i didn't get high speed internet until 2007 for xbox 360 primarily. but i was mind blown by all the map packs for ut2004
In my case UT99 is so nostalgic for me that it almost can go on the first place))) Even though I love UT2004, I still miss some maps from UT99 (for example the assault map with a ship). I also miss the UT99 weapon look and design. However, in my opinion UT2004 looks better than UT3, especially the weapon design. In general, I'd agree and place UT2004 on the first place
The best is Unreal Tournament 99. That game got more active players than every other UT game has together. it's still online thanks to the community with custom master servers. people still making maps, and new patches be the Old Unreal team to keep it updated for the modern PCs.
I worked on a couple of unreal engine 2, unreal engine 3 projects back in the day. Videos like this one really are giving me some good vibes about working on a modern map for ut2004!
I still can't hate on Unreal 2 after growing up on some narrative driven shooters growing up. Yes, it doesn't deserve the name of Unreal, but it's a pretty serviceable shooter on its own. Not to mention people admired the XMP expansion.
Man with UT99 I became so invested into that game, I learned how to use the Unrealed program to make my own custom levels was a lot of fun. However the og unreal doesn’t have dynamic day to night cycles the skybox is static. However through some mover grids you can simulate a day to night change. Only map I’ve ever seen do this was on Ut99 with the monster hunt map Deadcity. Really creepy stuff when you’re only a bright eyed 10 year old lol. But loved this ranking list all the same.
UT99 was the best of all … nothing can bring back this pioneer phase of online gaming, leagues and team feeling. Also it has clean visuals, nothing distracting and you can concentrate on the battle without any fancy stuff. Probably the best game of my life :)
I think the reason UT3 felt like a downgrade from 2k4 is because the developers were trying to make UT3 more competitive. I remember watching an interview where a developer said they are only adding weapons that fit the game and not because it sounds and look cool. The removal of the dodge jump from 2k4 into UT3 was also a competitive decision because they didn't want players covering too much ground and punish players for being out of position. The removal of features from a pervious game will always have a negative effect overall even if they are justified, more is just better. I did had fun with UT3, my only complaint was the graphics. I truly wish it was more colorful.
let's make players more "competitive" in UT3 by removing skill movement features and weapon variety cause the new kids are dumb and can't handle all that stuff. and after all the stupid decisions, Fortnite happened. F@€% U EPIC you greedy bastards.
It was alright, but I feel the problem was that it lost the unreal soul, which was always “anything goes” and it tried to trade it for a gears of war like, normal mapped to hell cohesive look
UT3 actually has the most refined gameplay in the series. What lets it down is the overall design and subsequently the game atmosphere. For me, the ideal UT game, which unfortunately will never come, would have UT99's atmosphere/aesthetics, UT2004's level of content, and UT3's gameplay, running on UE5.
Yes, UT 2004, fantastic out of the box and tons of great full mods, mod character models and mod maps.... Ballistic Weapons (don't forget Ballistic Blood), UT2341, UT3 characters, UT3 weapons, Community Bonus Map Pack, Ultimate Community Map Packs, monster packs, the list goes on. Scrolling sniper weapons (in & out). And using Reshade you can cut into the graphics divide with UT3... And yes, 2k4 just plays better. The bots are pretty great to start, and there is even a bot enhancement mutator. And on the bot selection screen are pictures of the bots. I'm Jonathan too, lol. Nice job on the video.👍
The Unreal games, '99 in particular are my unironic "born in the wrong generation" moments for me. When I was 13 my dad described Unreal Tournament to me as "if you weren't moving and shooting constantly you were a piece of red meat on the floor" and that stuck with me until I came across the game's store page on Steam and remembered him telling me about that. I've been in love with the game ever since and have played all the other ones that were on Steam, even Unreal 2. I always come back to them every few months and are my go-to when I have no internet. I'm 20 now and a feeling thats persisted in me was wishing I was born in time to be 13 for the peak of the original UT, and to get excited about subsequent entries as they came out. It is pretty corny when I actually type it out loud lol I was disheartened when I heard about the games being delisted on Steam knowing epic wouldn't be returning to the series again, especially after Unreal Tournament 4 which I'm not surprised didn't get mentioned in this video. If they do anything at all with Unreal Tournament 3 that involves making it more widely available, I'm jumping on that wagon even if its far from my favorite UT. Thanks for the video dude
I got Unreal bundled with my Voodoo 3 card but I was ignorant and didn't realize my PC didn't have an AGP slot so I had to swap it for a PCI card, but I kept the copy of Unreal and gave the other copy to my friend and we played Deathmatch over 56k dialup.
Born 97 and I grew up playing all the classics like quake to unreal to half life etc thanks to my dad and I was always a really big fan of unreal tournament sad to see what Epic has become
I only played UT99 & 2004, and these games still are in my top 10 fav. games. All these reviews make me want to reinstall them, especially since Epic shut them down. I'm so glad I book ght these disks back in the days.
This video heavily praises the customizability of bot matches in both UT99 and UT2004, as the best way to enjoy them in singleplayer. And while I absolutely agree with this, this is also true for all the other UT and UC games, where it's a bit unfair to criticize those for their lackluster campaigns to justify their lower rankings (among other things). I've also had a ton of fun with both UC2 and UT3 (and sometimes still have), just messing around with all the options those game can give you. The Titan mutator, for example, can be mad fun. UT3 also has some fantastic community contents, making it one of my favorite entries to go back to, despite the GoW story and visuals.
UT2003 had one of the best main menu themes. 2004 is where I lived a good portion of my childhood, but it IS criminal they took down the games so you can't even buy them.
I tested Unreal Championship 2 and thought it was an underappreciated game. Melee combat and being able to Reflect any weapons for made the game a lot of fun. Outside of the game modes themselves, we'd stand across maps, shoot a rocket and see how many times we could reflect back and forth. With each reflection the ticket would get faster and faster. If you were lucky enough to reflect a sniper round, it was an automatic headshot to the original shooter.
I loved this game when I was a kid and have been trying to look up and find these games specifically unreal tournament/championship and I could only remember the Anubis character. Thank you for making this video as it brings me back to my childhood! Sad to see they are taking the community servers down.
I just remember Unreal 2 was so damn short! When the thing at the end happened I thought "oh boy, here we go, time for epic revenge rampage" and then the credits started rolling.
I played a lot of 2003 and 2004 What I liked most is the mods you could make your own maps and skins (wich none but yourself could see unless they also had it installed) I liked the invasion mod a lot where you had to collab against all kinds of AI swarm attacks. You goined xp wich you could use to make yourself stronger.
You can still buy grey-market keys for it for GOG or Steam. Alternately, you can get it pretty cheap on ebay, especially if you buy the Anthology. All that said, I would consider these games abandonware at this point and fully endorse the art of "yarr" in this case.
I've always preferred the dark gritty atmosphere of UT99 over the bright lush atmosphere of UT2004. The maps in UT99 look like actual places and feel like a true expansion on Unreal GOLD. May not have been the best in the series from a game-play/mechanical perspective, but the aesthetics are just way cooler.
I had started on 2003. I was way too young to be playing it. Me and my cousin loved it, and played the first two maps of the campaign (training day and gael) while under my mom's supervision. She played it too, always in some kind of CTF map.
The first Unreal Championship had a special place in my heart because it was the first Unreal game I played in the series and I was a Xbox guy as a kid. The 2nd Unreal Championship is arguably my most favorite Unreal. I wish I had the chance to play that game online. It had to have a steep learning curve.
I still remember coming out of Vortex Rikers onto the surface of Na Pali. And now there's like Unreal 5 Engine, and Epic's shutting down UT servers. Time flies fast...
I like all Unreal games. I get why UT2004 is praised as the best. But for me personally, I prefer UT99 more for its industrial feel, techno music and super fast pace. UT2004 feels more cartoony to me and players look small relative to the environment and therefore pace feels slower than UT99. But overall, both of them are GOATs.
Exactly! How can UT2003 be ranked second worst, which it probably is, and UT2004 ranked as the best when it's largely based on UT2003? Don't get me wrong, I loved UT2004 at the time and I even liked UT2003 a lot when it first came out, but as the years passed, it became more and more obvious that the original UT was the one that best stood the test of time.
As someone that played UT 99 and is currently Playing UT2004, ill say that 1999 is far better in terms of gameplay, graphics and fun in general. A lot if the death animations and bullet push back that made the original fun was removed in 2004 and wven the red screen to show when youre getting hit was also removed. The Characters in 2004 looks so muddled up, you'd always confuse them with Objects and weapons floating.
Nothing will replace UT from late 1999 through mid 2001. Just incredible online support, ngStats, PUF / BUF, Cl@nbase and Proving Grounds, all the maps, mods, public servers, mutators, skins, official free DLC, massive player counts, etc. I don't think there will ever be a community like that again.
I have played all the unreal games. Recently I started playing the UT games again online. There is still some servers still with people playing. There are bots for the servers that are empty. The mods support in 2k4 was great. I was surprised there is a community that still supports the game.
I started fps with doom and doom 2 but ut99 really got me into cpu gaming, cpu upgrading and eventually cpu building. That voodoo2 card made it so realistic at the time. I spent many nights playing with friends, mostly ctf instagib. We had a “clan” and organized everything on irc. Is there really no way to play ut99 now?
That was quite the trip 😊 !! Honestly havent had the same feeling since with anything else , the taunts, the movement, the weapons, the maps, the competition, the voicelines 😅
UT 2004 is by far the best in the series, (In my opinion....). It had the best maps in the series, and the feel of UT 2004 was just glorious. That early 2000s coolness man. I had 100s of hours into UT 2004, and it was a fantastic game, and by far my favorite Arena Shooter ever made.. (In my opinion). I still love Unreal and UT 99, but UT 2004 was just more nostalgic. Epic Games is the worst for bringing these games down. I hate you Fortnite, rot in hell.
i started in 2005 with ut2004 , for me ut2004 .. 2k4 has been the ultimate shooter experience this game was so epic adrenalin kick shooter , never a shooter that can match this ut2k4 experience for me , played 2005 to 2009 i was in a clan played on ctf and ictf maps , some tam and tdm to my had own clan service , good times and even some clanbase matches our clan video is even on youtube still from 14 years ago .
Myself and a few people from an online gaming group I'm part of played UT99 last weekend, it was the first time I had ever played a UT game online and can honestly say it was a blast! We played for 6 hours straight and decided we should do it again sometime. If you own UT99 all you need to play it online is the community made 469c patch from OldUnreal.
My Favorite was UT 2004, but UT3, 2004, and the OG UT are all very close to each other. Within 10%. Shame none of them will continue being officially supported.
i remember back in the day i used to play and mod the hell out of ut2004. Balistic mod with hl2 npcs like fast zombies etc. and riding the strider or gunship. my UT fodler allways have around 250GB of additional mods. Yeah its my all time favourite i have original 4CD with me still. Man so much memories
25:05 Honestly? I think UT2004 looks better in aesthetics viewpoint, than UT3. UT3 is just too dark, i never really could attached to it. I don't know if u guys saw UT2004 with RTX, but man, that stuff is hot, and really brings that aesthetics differences to the table i think.
Damn I love ut so much, spend so many hours playing ut2004 invasion rpg, Unreal insanity, Rosebum, Death Warrant monster mash, incredible servers, but only 1 of them still exists are it has not been updated in probably 10 years and has a concurrent playerbase of like 1, which is very bad considering the servers issues. I remeber somewhere that one of the reasons the ai is so good was that it was a deathmatch ai, so even things like basic skaarj will dodge projectiles, which can be a bit annoying on higher difficulties, but it means you have to try trick he ai, because you know he will dodge your attack, so you have to bait his dodge into a trap, add in the fact that they can hit you with projectiles at any range and speed, by predicting your position, you have to avoid there predictive aim, which coming from something like doom, is amazing. Also 1 amazing thing from UT2003, the best thing, the main menu theme, I LOVE IT, so much but not anywhere in 2004, so sad.
I don't know how to describe it, but there is a "sharpness" to unreal and unreal tournament. Sure I love ut2004, however, it hasn’t got that same "sharpness". I remember seeing unreal 2 in the store, having played all the games up to ut2004, and trying to convince my older brother to buy it together, but he refused. Guess I really dodged the bullet there.
LOL I was NOT going to comment on this video ,you did a great job ! But I was just thinking to myself how the Egyptian level was giving me flashbacks of one of my other favorite games and you said it KILLING FLOOR ! Because so many maps from Unreal are used on custom servers.I also miss the days of porting in custom skins for players and the bots. I was Giger Noodles killing people with the piston as a Xenomorph , and we also had an 8 legged freaks mod making all the bots giant spiders with guns GREAT DAYS OF OLD !! Thanks for the feels!!
Revive this series. My favorite memory is, I was I guess 13 when I played unreal 2 the awakening and it was fun. One fine day I bought this random game unreal tournament 2003. I thought what kind of a game is it, it says tournament, maybe some sports game or something (I was not that of an internet kid) I installed it, there were 2 cds, cd1 cd2. Started playing it and fell in love with it, it ran gracefully on my 128mb ram pc with dont know some intel 945 graphics. Still one of the finest arena shooters
But that's just scratching the surface of UT2004, if you really want to see it at it's best you need the 64 bit version, open the config file set everything to max no compressed lighting etc, then get Great Emerald's Mutator set which replaces the vehicles, health, guns with UT3 models, and it looks amazing to add the cherry on top you play it with Reshade
UT3 and UT2004 were the greatest memories I had! My first LAN Party was with UT2004, followed by a LAN Party where we actually brought our own Xbox 360 with us and played on split screen through the night until someone stopped our gameplay because... SOMEONE (not me
I know that Unreal 2 is considered shitty, and compared to the rest of the series and other shooters around that time, I don't disagree. But I'm still fond of it, because funnily enough, it was my first Unreal game. I played it way back in the day when it was still kinda new, and I also didn't have that many games at the time, especially not many shooters. One thing I can say is that it was definitely the best looking game of its year at least.
If any of the other games had DOMINATION in them they would be highly favored, but they left it in the first UT. But that title doesn't have GREED, which UTIII does. gdit Granted, they put Domination into 2003, 2004, but they altered the format subtracting the need to find a 3rd point I think it was. Lame. GREED & Domination were the best. Always bummed when the Domination tier was over. Oh & the vehicles in 2004 were top notch. I could pilot every single damn thing almost perfectly. They had to change things though for part III and I adapted but they were not as easy to fly, drive, pilot.
Agreed that Domination and Greed are fantastic, they are also among my favorite modes to play. They are in this sweet spot between the basic Team Deathmatch and the more "complicated" objective based team modes, where they are more interesting to play, but it never gets too overwhelming with what's going on and you don't have to rely on team mates as much (which is good when playing with bots). Double Domination from UT200x also didn't really do it for me, it's super annoying and too campy with the countdown mechanic. At least UT3 does have a decent mod that adds the classic Domination to it, so you can have both modes there. (I prefer the CBP3 version, it's clean and simple, only adds "Domination" and nothing else, and the maps are awesome, especially Enslaved and Collision Course. It feels as close to an official version as it can get.)
Played UT99 from 2000 to about 2011. But lately Epic destroyed Rocket League. Now I learn that Epic literally removed Unreal lmao wtf. FCK EPIC. Will boycot Epic for the rest of my life now. 💯
I'm kind of playing catch-up with '90s and early 2000s FPSes right now (I've been into 16-bit games, and puzzle games, and JRPGS, and metroidvanias, and a few other things over the years, but I was so bad at Doom and Wolf3D as a kid that FPSes largely fell off my radar aside from a short stint playing UT 1999 with friends and a much shorter stint playing Counterstrike with some of the same friends. Anyway, I played through almost the entire Half-Life series, then BioShock, then played the OG Quake, and then I thought "what about the first Unreal game?" I checked Steam because I bought Unreal Tournament there a few years back, but it wasn't there. Checked GOG, nothing. "OK," I thought, "they must finally only be selling the Unreal series on the Epic Store. Well, for the first time in my life, I will bite the bullet and actually buy something from the Epic Games Store." But nope, they took it down on their own storefront as well, even the single-player games. 🤷What a ridiculous company.
Starting in the mid-ish 2010s (2014 at the earliest, I think) with a sort of I guess hiatus from 2019/2020 till last month because my computer was disassembled (last month I redownloaded the demo on a different computer), I've been playing a demo version of UT2004 (if you Google "UT2004 demo download", the CNET link is the one I've been playing), and although it's missing a LOT of the features the full game has, it's pretty fun IMO, and tbh this video is making me really tempted to find some way to play the full game lmfao. I also play UT3, though I still feel that 2004 - even the demo version I've been playing since the 2010s - is 100% superior. I'm tempted to eventually play all the games in the franchise, with UT99, Unreal, and UT4 being some of the ones I'm more interested in playing (UT2003 is also probably up there, but it's a fair bit similar to 2004 and I feel like I'd have a similar but somewhat more negative opinion of it).
To this day, im still plenty piss that they decided to remove perfectly working games off of the Steam platform and not even release them onto their platform
UT3 was good. But if there is one thing I could remove from the game, it would be the annoying way that the weapons swayed left and right as you turn the camera. It seriously triggers me and I don't know why.
the best n1 is Original Unreal98 - Why Unreal tournament 1999 had to be a mod - UT99 the mod is called BotPack and therefore it is Unreal98 with improved and modified Engine Conclusion Unreal tournament is Unreal98 hidden by the BotPack mod In the original Unreal98 already contains Deathmatch, TDM, Darkmatch
Crazy they are getting delisted luckily I bought them on steam already - except 2k3 which was never available on steam By far my favourite was 2003 :/ But yea I played it very extensively even on the ESL. I don’t recall switching to 2004 Yea ut99 we played so much on lan.. basically every weekend. 40% UT 40% cs beta 20% q3a
I dont really understand why they delisted these games. I mean, they realize these games can still be played offline, right? Wouldn't having these games for sale make Epic more money?
UTX and UT2k4 were one of the greatest. the fact that UT3 sucked so hard is because it tried to take itself too serious, it followed the trend of making all its maps dark and gritty like its going through puberty and telling mom to frick off. the onslaught and assault mode in UT2004 were absolutely amazing, despite the stilted lghtning engine and whackiness of the over-all engine making things feel "unreal?" while UT3 was definetly a graphical update to 2004, it barely felt like unreal touurnament. it was slower-paced, everything was gritty, the story tried to take itself serious while making no sense. UTX had a story but it was brief, short and made at least some sense. the evil liandri corproration had a violence problem with its laborers in the furthest sectors of its expansive empire and tried to quell internal rage and bloodlust by simulating deathmatch battles between its laborforce. liandri then figured out "wow, people pay money to watch that shit?" and then they did make people pay to watch that shit because people loved to watch skaarj warriors tear apart some gothic looking harlequin thingy screeching "TRY TURNING THE SAFETY OFF!"
ut2004 offline with bots is more fun than call of duty since 2011 they cant shut that down
TRUE words... ❤🔥
@@YTmokey42, yes. Thanks to the great, and very configurable, bots, the Unreal Torunaments/Unreal Championships games will always be very playable, allowing you to play on the map that you choose, with the skill level that you choose, with the mutators that you choose, and using the mods that you choose, and the bots won't cheat, or quit the game when they are losing, or deliberately shoot their own team.
Plus the Unreal Tournament games on the PC have countless new maps, new mutators, new game-play modes, new mods, etc, making sure that the games never become boring. I always install UT 1999 and UT 2004 whenever I get a new PC or laptop. Utterly timeless games.
Emosonal damage to activition 🤣🤣🤣
Absolute correct 😁
FACTS. Man, it's so hard trying to find a game that resembles anything like the feelings from the Unreal series anymore.
personally i'd put UT99 at nr 1 above everything else
but other than that spot on ranking.
there's just something about the aesthetic of UT99 that no other game has ever managed to reproduce in gaming history (let alone within the unreal franchise). the fast paced gameplay, the simplicity, the limitless possibilities, the maps (which i think are the best in the series), even the tournament campaign... and the soundtrack?? imo the best soundtrack in gaming history. nothing beats the dnb jungle inspired ost of it.
Completely agree.
this
UT99 will always be the Mecca of the series. If you got good with the translocator telefragging was so satisfying
I've never felt like Epic is the kind of company that cares about its games or its legacy or is capable of any kind of sentimentality. They only care about the product that makes them the most money at the time, which is why they already abandoned Unreal Tournament after Gears of War became popular, and had ditched Unreal proper even before that.
They abandoned Unreal for Unreal Tournament, ironically. There was an Unreal Tournamente in development in 2016 but it was ditched for Fortine and it's all they care about now.
Welll that's not completely true. They still attempted another proper Unreal (Unreal 2) after the success of Tournament, but it was a shitty sequel, no wonder it was gonna fail. Similarly, they made UT3 after Gears of War, which also has the same story, it was a subpar sequel.
I think the thing that really stings is pulling all the Unreal games from all digital storefronts. It really comes off as being ashamed of their legacy and not wanting people to try out their older titles, maybe they did it to try and curb search results for Unreal to always point towards the newest version of the engine? Even still it wasn't necessary to delist them. Should have just made them entirely, officially free to download instead.
Edit: I am technically wrong! you can still buy and play Unreal Championship 2 on the Xbox Series, it's still on the store there.
@@Soreign_ And they abandoned Jack Jazzrabbit for Unreal, when 2d platformers stopped being popular. So yes, they did it already for long time.
They don’t even care about their players, it’s pretty sad, cause they know how to make good games.
Unreal Championship 2 was a precursor to the "hero shooter" genre. The added melee combat that actually was useful should have been integrated into the following games.
When the light-medium-heavy class mentioned, automatically the TF2 and Overwatch came to my mind. It's sad that that UT had the potential even for the future generations but it's never happened, instead we got a Fortnite, somehow :\
The original too since every faction had unique attributes. UC2 took it to another level.
ut3 has some cool maps but I miss all the more exotic map locations of 2004
My memorable moments with the series:
UT99: Minigunning an opponent upwards on Morpheus. He just flies higher and higher until you run out of ammo.
UT99: Accidentally falling from a great height and landing on a bot, killing him while surviving myself. The killfeed didn't know what to write except "[my player] killed [opponent]"
Unreal: A kind of melodramatic, almost sad feeling after finishing the game for the first time. "Okay, so what am I going to do now?"
UT2004: LAN party with 5-6 other guys on Phobos. Everyone running around on the roof (for some reason) trying to kill each other. One player wipes everyone out with the Ion Cannon. Everyone laughs at getting killed.
UT99: Discovering modern remixes of the soundtrack, particularly Necto Ulin's work.
Yeah … that were the times 😊
For me Unreal Gold was one of the first games i played in my life, i really enjoyed that game and still do especially the story mode and the last unreal game that i got to play was ut99, these 2 games have a special place in my heart
That game isn’t just a shooter unreal gold was like an adventure for me the environment and how badly the nali were treated by everyone else
i just played ut2004 but against bots. its my favourite game because back in 2004 my family only had dial up so i never gamed online. but ut2004 game me a online game experience without internet. i didn't get high speed internet until 2007 for xbox 360 primarily. but i was mind blown by all the map packs for ut2004
In my case UT99 is so nostalgic for me that it almost can go on the first place))) Even though I love UT2004, I still miss some maps from UT99 (for example the assault map with a ship). I also miss the UT99 weapon look and design. However, in my opinion UT2004 looks better than UT3, especially the weapon design. In general, I'd agree and place UT2004 on the first place
The best is Unreal Tournament 99. That game got more active players than every other UT game has together. it's still online thanks to the community with custom master servers. people still making maps, and new patches be the Old Unreal team to keep it updated for the modern PCs.
I worked on a couple of unreal engine 2, unreal engine 3 projects back in the day. Videos like this one really are giving me some good vibes about working on a modern map for ut2004!
Got into UT99 for the first time about 5 months ago and I love it.
I still can't hate on Unreal 2 after growing up on some narrative driven shooters growing up. Yes, it doesn't deserve the name of Unreal, but it's a pretty serviceable shooter on its own. Not to mention people admired the XMP expansion.
Man with UT99 I became so invested into that game, I learned how to use the Unrealed program to make my own custom levels was a lot of fun. However the og unreal doesn’t have dynamic day to night cycles the skybox is static. However through some mover grids you can simulate a day to night change. Only map I’ve ever seen do this was on Ut99 with the monster hunt map Deadcity. Really creepy stuff when you’re only a bright eyed 10 year old lol. But loved this ranking list all the same.
UT99 was the best of all … nothing can bring back this pioneer phase of online gaming, leagues and team feeling. Also it has clean visuals, nothing distracting and you can concentrate on the battle without any fancy stuff. Probably the best game of my life :)
I think the reason UT3 felt like a downgrade from 2k4 is because the developers were trying to make UT3 more competitive. I remember watching an interview where a developer said they are only adding weapons that fit the game and not because it sounds and look cool. The removal of the dodge jump from 2k4 into UT3 was also a competitive decision because they didn't want players covering too much ground and punish players for being out of position. The removal of features from a pervious game will always have a negative effect overall even if they are justified, more is just better. I did had fun with UT3, my only complaint was the graphics. I truly wish it was more colorful.
Love UT3 / championship I remember playing with bots for hours on end. Prefer it to UT4
let's make players more "competitive" in UT3 by removing skill movement features and weapon variety cause the new kids are dumb and can't handle all that stuff.
and after all the stupid decisions, Fortnite happened.
F@€% U EPIC you greedy bastards.
It was alright, but I feel the problem was that it lost the unreal soul, which was always “anything goes” and it tried to trade it for a gears of war like, normal mapped to hell cohesive look
It's because it was made with consoles in mind.
UT3 actually has the most refined gameplay in the series. What lets it down is the overall design and subsequently the game atmosphere.
For me, the ideal UT game, which unfortunately will never come, would have UT99's atmosphere/aesthetics, UT2004's level of content, and UT3's gameplay, running on UE5.
Yes, UT 2004, fantastic out of the box and tons of great full mods, mod character models and mod maps.... Ballistic Weapons (don't forget Ballistic Blood), UT2341, UT3 characters, UT3 weapons, Community Bonus Map Pack, Ultimate Community Map Packs, monster packs, the list goes on. Scrolling sniper weapons (in & out). And using Reshade you can cut into the graphics divide with UT3... And yes, 2k4 just plays better. The bots are pretty great to start, and there is even a bot enhancement mutator. And on the bot selection screen are pictures of the bots.
I'm Jonathan too, lol. Nice job on the video.👍
Unreal championship xbox was my childhood beating. Godlike difficulty was fun
It's so bizarre the fact that you can't buy these games anymore, not even in Epic Games Store. That's just stupid.
You can still install the non steam version, it is still available online in some websites and play it yourself.. But you will play offline only
The Unreal games, '99 in particular are my unironic "born in the wrong generation" moments for me. When I was 13 my dad described Unreal Tournament to me as "if you weren't moving and shooting constantly you were a piece of red meat on the floor" and that stuck with me until I came across the game's store page on Steam and remembered him telling me about that. I've been in love with the game ever since and have played all the other ones that were on Steam, even Unreal 2. I always come back to them every few months and are my go-to when I have no internet. I'm 20 now and a feeling thats persisted in me was wishing I was born in time to be 13 for the peak of the original UT, and to get excited about subsequent entries as they came out. It is pretty corny when I actually type it out loud lol
I was disheartened when I heard about the games being delisted on Steam knowing epic wouldn't be returning to the series again, especially after Unreal Tournament 4 which I'm not surprised didn't get mentioned in this video. If they do anything at all with Unreal Tournament 3 that involves making it more widely available, I'm jumping on that wagon even if its far from my favorite UT.
Thanks for the video dude
UT99 was one of the first video games I ever played. Absolutely fell in love. I’m glad I got it on steam before Epic removed it.
I got Unreal bundled with my Voodoo 3 card but I was ignorant and didn't realize my PC didn't have an AGP slot so I had to swap it for a PCI card, but I kept the copy of Unreal and gave the other copy to my friend and we played Deathmatch over 56k dialup.
Born 97 and I grew up playing all the classics like quake to unreal to half life etc thanks to my dad and I was always a really big fan of unreal tournament sad to see what Epic has become
I only played UT99 & 2004, and these games still are in my top 10 fav. games.
All these reviews make me want to reinstall them, especially since Epic shut them down.
I'm so glad I book ght these disks back in the days.
UT 1999 needs a remaster. Same game , up to date graphics like d2r ! Id buy it and play it.
Same here! There’s some pretty good community patches that make the graphics better and allows you to play online it’s tons of fun
UT99 was magical
Truely
This video heavily praises the customizability of bot matches in both UT99 and UT2004, as the best way to enjoy them in singleplayer. And while I absolutely agree with this, this is also true for all the other UT and UC games, where it's a bit unfair to criticize those for their lackluster campaigns to justify their lower rankings (among other things). I've also had a ton of fun with both UC2 and UT3 (and sometimes still have), just messing around with all the options those game can give you. The Titan mutator, for example, can be mad fun. UT3 also has some fantastic community contents, making it one of my favorite entries to go back to, despite the GoW story and visuals.
Used to play 99 all day. I still have the CDs. I consider the Star Wars Battlefront series as my replacement
"open the field" and "top of the end" are both hilarious malapropisms
UT'99 was My Jam.
50 Frags in 20 minutes. That was my High School Lunch time. Against Gamers like me. NO ONE wanted to play me after that. Cowards.
Used to love playing Unreal Championship 2 as Raiden from Mortal Kombat. It felt sooooo right hahaha
UT2003 had one of the best main menu themes. 2004 is where I lived a good portion of my childhood, but it IS criminal they took down the games so you can't even buy them.
You can still find non steam version online to play it for yourself, it's better than nothing
Original unreal castle flyby is very nostalgic for me
UT2004 is Holy Sh*t category.
I tested Unreal Championship 2 and thought it was an underappreciated game. Melee combat and being able to Reflect any weapons for made the game a lot of fun. Outside of the game modes themselves, we'd stand across maps, shoot a rocket and see how many times we could reflect back and forth. With each reflection the ticket would get faster and faster. If you were lucky enough to reflect a sniper round, it was an automatic headshot to the original shooter.
the demo disc from xbox magazine baby
I loved this game when I was a kid and have been trying to look up and find these games specifically unreal tournament/championship and I could only remember the Anubis character. Thank you for making this video as it brings me back to my childhood! Sad to see they are taking the community servers down.
I just remember Unreal 2 was so damn short! When the thing at the end happened I thought "oh boy, here we go, time for epic revenge rampage" and then the credits started rolling.
I played a lot of 2003 and 2004 What I liked most is the mods you could make your own maps and skins (wich none but yourself could see unless they also had it installed) I liked the invasion mod a lot where you had to collab against all kinds of AI swarm attacks. You goined xp wich you could use to make yourself stronger.
I love Unreal mostly UT99 because my computer couldn't handle UT2004, but now I want to install 2004 and I can't get it
You can still buy grey-market keys for it for GOG or Steam. Alternately, you can get it pretty cheap on ebay, especially if you buy the Anthology.
All that said, I would consider these games abandonware at this point and fully endorse the art of "yarr" in this case.
I've always preferred the dark gritty atmosphere of UT99 over the bright lush atmosphere of UT2004. The maps in UT99 look like actual places and feel like a true expansion on Unreal GOLD. May not have been the best in the series from a game-play/mechanical perspective, but the aesthetics are just way cooler.
Absolutely
I had started on 2003. I was way too young to be playing it. Me and my cousin loved it, and played the first two maps of the campaign (training day and gael) while under my mom's supervision. She played it too, always in some kind of CTF map.
The first Unreal Championship had a special place in my heart because it was the first Unreal game I played in the series and I was a Xbox guy as a kid. The 2nd Unreal Championship is arguably my most favorite Unreal. I wish I had the chance to play that game online. It had to have a steep learning curve.
I still remember coming out of Vortex Rikers onto the surface of Na Pali.
And now there's like Unreal 5 Engine, and Epic's shutting down UT servers.
Time flies fast...
I like all Unreal games. I get why UT2004 is praised as the best. But for me personally, I prefer UT99 more for its industrial feel, techno music and super fast pace. UT2004 feels more cartoony to me and players look small relative to the environment and therefore pace feels slower than UT99. But overall, both of them are GOATs.
Exactly! How can UT2003 be ranked second worst, which it probably is, and UT2004 ranked as the best when it's largely based on UT2003?
Don't get me wrong, I loved UT2004 at the time and I even liked UT2003 a lot when it first came out, but as the years passed, it became more and more obvious that the original UT was the one that best stood the test of time.
As someone that played UT 99 and is currently Playing UT2004, ill say that 1999 is far better in terms of gameplay, graphics and fun in general. A lot if the death animations and bullet push back that made the original fun was removed in 2004 and wven the red screen to show when youre getting hit was also removed.
The Characters in 2004 looks so muddled up, you'd always confuse them with Objects and weapons floating.
Agreed!
Nothing will replace UT from late 1999 through mid 2001. Just incredible online support, ngStats, PUF / BUF, Cl@nbase and Proving Grounds, all the maps, mods, public servers, mutators, skins, official free DLC, massive player counts, etc. I don't think there will ever be a community like that again.
That were the best times.
I have played all the unreal games. Recently I started playing the UT games again online. There is still some servers still with people playing. There are bots for the servers that are empty. The mods support in 2k4 was great. I was surprised there is a community that still supports the game.
watching the Unreal intro with a voodoo 3d was the first time i saw a reflection in a game ( the walk way ) and i was absolutely stunned!
I started fps with doom and doom 2 but ut99 really got me into cpu gaming, cpu upgrading and eventually cpu building. That voodoo2 card made it so realistic at the time. I spent many nights playing with friends, mostly ctf instagib. We had a “clan” and organized everything on irc.
Is there really no way to play ut99 now?
ther is no longer any official ways to buy the game but you can buy the rom for it second hand or pirate it
That was quite the trip 😊 !! Honestly havent had the same feeling since with anything else , the taunts, the movement, the weapons, the maps, the competition, the voicelines 😅
UT 2004 is by far the best in the series, (In my opinion....). It had the best maps in the series, and the feel of UT 2004 was just glorious. That early 2000s coolness man. I had 100s of hours into UT 2004, and it was a fantastic game, and by far my favorite Arena Shooter ever made.. (In my opinion). I still love Unreal and UT 99, but UT 2004 was just more nostalgic. Epic Games is the worst for bringing these games down. I hate you Fortnite, rot in hell.
i started in 2005 with ut2004 , for me ut2004 .. 2k4 has been the ultimate shooter experience this game was so epic adrenalin kick shooter , never a shooter that can match this ut2k4 experience for me , played 2005 to 2009 i was in a clan played on ctf and ictf maps , some tam and tdm to my had own clan service , good times and even some clanbase matches our clan video is even on youtube still from 14 years ago .
Myself and a few people from an online gaming group I'm part of played UT99 last weekend, it was the first time I had ever played a UT game online and can honestly say it was a blast!
We played for 6 hours straight and decided we should do it again sometime.
If you own UT99 all you need to play it online is the community made 469c patch from OldUnreal.
Unreal 1, what this game does with music is out of this world. My favorite game.
GOG ( Good Old Games ) removed ALL Unreal games from their catalog/store earlier this year. ( 2023 ).
My Favorite was UT 2004, but UT3, 2004, and the OG UT are all very close to each other. Within 10%.
Shame none of them will continue being officially supported.
I loved Unreal Tournament 2004 and I don't know what else to say either other than I hope we get a new one just like it someday for the fans
i remember back in the day i used to play and mod the hell out of ut2004. Balistic mod with hl2 npcs like fast zombies etc. and riding the strider or gunship. my UT fodler allways have around 250GB of additional mods. Yeah its my all time favourite i have original 4CD with me still. Man so much memories
Getting in the Leviathan with the boys in 04 is one of my favorite memories of gaming
the male announcer is iconic but the female announcer when you get a huge multikill killstreak is something else
You mean the Sexy voice?
Bought the Anthology edition on dvd years ago. One of the best gaming purchases I've ever made.
25:05 Honestly? I think UT2004 looks better in aesthetics viewpoint, than UT3. UT3 is just too dark, i never really could attached to it. I don't know if u guys saw UT2004 with RTX, but man, that stuff is hot, and really brings that aesthetics differences to the table i think.
Yeah, but going back I do miss all those modern bells and whistles. The UT3 rocket launcher is just so cool. Shame the game itself is a bit clunky.
Damn I love ut so much, spend so many hours playing ut2004 invasion rpg, Unreal insanity, Rosebum, Death Warrant monster mash, incredible servers, but only 1 of them still exists are it has not been updated in probably 10 years and has a concurrent playerbase of like 1, which is very bad considering the servers issues. I remeber somewhere that one of the reasons the ai is so good was that it was a deathmatch ai, so even things like basic skaarj will dodge projectiles, which can be a bit annoying on higher difficulties, but it means you have to try trick he ai, because you know he will dodge your attack, so you have to bait his dodge into a trap, add in the fact that they can hit you with projectiles at any range and speed, by predicting your position, you have to avoid there predictive aim, which coming from something like doom, is amazing.
Also 1 amazing thing from UT2003, the best thing, the main menu theme, I LOVE IT, so much but not anywhere in 2004, so sad.
I don't know how to describe it, but there is a "sharpness" to unreal and unreal tournament. Sure I love ut2004, however, it hasn’t got that same "sharpness".
I remember seeing unreal 2 in the store, having played all the games up to ut2004, and trying to convince my older brother to buy it together, but he refused. Guess I really dodged the bullet there.
LOL I was NOT going to comment on this video ,you did a great job ! But I was just thinking to myself how the Egyptian level was giving me flashbacks of one of my other favorite games and you said it KILLING FLOOR ! Because so many maps from Unreal are used on custom servers.I also miss the days of porting in custom skins for players and the bots. I was Giger Noodles killing people with the piston as a Xenomorph , and we also had an 8 legged freaks mod making all the bots giant spiders with guns GREAT DAYS OF OLD !! Thanks for the feels!!
I could have sworn that unreal championship or unreal tournament 2 required a downloadable patch before you can play online for original Xbox. 🤔
Revive this series. My favorite memory is, I was I guess 13 when I played unreal 2 the awakening and it was fun. One fine day I bought this random game unreal tournament 2003. I thought what kind of a game is it, it says tournament, maybe some sports game or something (I was not that of an internet kid) I installed it, there were 2 cds, cd1 cd2.
Started playing it and fell in love with it, it ran gracefully on my 128mb ram pc with dont know some intel 945 graphics.
Still one of the finest arena shooters
But that's just scratching the surface of UT2004, if you really want to see it at it's best you need the 64 bit version, open the config file set everything to max no compressed lighting etc, then get Great Emerald's Mutator set which replaces the vehicles, health, guns with UT3 models, and it looks amazing to add the cherry on top you play it with Reshade
I miss the UT4 official server days. Fun times.
UT3 and UT2004 were the greatest memories I had! My first LAN Party was with UT2004, followed by a LAN Party where we actually brought our own Xbox 360 with us and played on split screen through the night until someone stopped our gameplay because...
SOMEONE (not me
I know that Unreal 2 is considered shitty, and compared to the rest of the series and other shooters around that time, I don't disagree. But I'm still fond of it, because funnily enough, it was my first Unreal game. I played it way back in the day when it was still kinda new, and I also didn't have that many games at the time, especially not many shooters. One thing I can say is that it was definitely the best looking game of its year at least.
You'd think that with all the money they make off of Fortnite, they'd support other franchises like Unreal Tournament as a little side-project
spent my childhood playing invasion RPG on ut2004, good times
and then we never even got ut3x :C
Actually fucking pathetic. Would be pennies for Epic to give us SOMETHING, and they just refuse.
Genuinely makes me feel sick when I think about it.
@@personnelproton I'm working on an open source project to bring back of the sorts. Check out Open Tournament
UT2004 is the only inly video game I still play. Nice to see others enjoying it!
10:50 yeah, about that..........................
If any of the other games had DOMINATION in them they would be highly favored, but they left it in the first UT. But that title doesn't have GREED, which UTIII does. gdit
Granted, they put Domination into 2003, 2004, but they altered the format subtracting the need to find a 3rd point I think it was. Lame.
GREED & Domination were the best. Always bummed when the Domination tier was over.
Oh & the vehicles in 2004 were top notch. I could pilot every single damn thing almost perfectly. They had to change things though for part III and I adapted but they were not as easy to fly, drive, pilot.
Agreed that Domination and Greed are fantastic, they are also among my favorite modes to play. They are in this sweet spot between the basic Team Deathmatch and the more "complicated" objective based team modes, where they are more interesting to play, but it never gets too overwhelming with what's going on and you don't have to rely on team mates as much (which is good when playing with bots). Double Domination from UT200x also didn't really do it for me, it's super annoying and too campy with the countdown mechanic.
At least UT3 does have a decent mod that adds the classic Domination to it, so you can have both modes there. (I prefer the CBP3 version, it's clean and simple, only adds "Domination" and nothing else, and the maps are awesome, especially Enslaved and Collision Course. It feels as close to an official version as it can get.)
Unreal Championship was one of my favorite games on the original xbox
Played UT99 from 2000 to about 2011.
But lately Epic destroyed Rocket League. Now I learn that Epic literally removed Unreal lmao wtf. FCK EPIC. Will boycot Epic for the rest of my life now. 💯
I'm kind of playing catch-up with '90s and early 2000s FPSes right now (I've been into 16-bit games, and puzzle games, and JRPGS, and metroidvanias, and a few other things over the years, but I was so bad at Doom and Wolf3D as a kid that FPSes largely fell off my radar aside from a short stint playing UT 1999 with friends and a much shorter stint playing Counterstrike with some of the same friends. Anyway, I played through almost the entire Half-Life series, then BioShock, then played the OG Quake, and then I thought "what about the first Unreal game?" I checked Steam because I bought Unreal Tournament there a few years back, but it wasn't there. Checked GOG, nothing. "OK," I thought, "they must finally only be selling the Unreal series on the Epic Store. Well, for the first time in my life, I will bite the bullet and actually buy something from the Epic Games Store." But nope, they took it down on their own storefront as well, even the single-player games. 🤷What a ridiculous company.
Nothing beats VCTF!!
9 months ago.
Yeah they canned the UT3X project shortly after now everything is just gone only way to get them is through sailing the seven sees.
Starting in the mid-ish 2010s (2014 at the earliest, I think) with a sort of I guess hiatus from 2019/2020 till last month because my computer was disassembled (last month I redownloaded the demo on a different computer), I've been playing a demo version of UT2004 (if you Google "UT2004 demo download", the CNET link is the one I've been playing), and although it's missing a LOT of the features the full game has, it's pretty fun IMO, and tbh this video is making me really tempted to find some way to play the full game lmfao. I also play UT3, though I still feel that 2004 - even the demo version I've been playing since the 2010s - is 100% superior. I'm tempted to eventually play all the games in the franchise, with UT99, Unreal, and UT4 being some of the ones I'm more interested in playing (UT2003 is also probably up there, but it's a fair bit similar to 2004 and I feel like I'd have a similar but somewhat more negative opinion of it).
Unreal Gold is freaking awesome and love playing it. Also there is a RPG server to join aswell.
Some of the best gaming memories I've ever had. We're in until tournament 2003 bombing run
To this day, im still plenty piss that they decided to remove perfectly working games off of the Steam platform and not even release them onto their platform
UT3 was good. But if there is one thing I could remove from the game, it would be the annoying way that the weapons swayed left and right as you turn the camera. It seriously triggers me and I don't know why.
the best n1 is Original Unreal98
- Why Unreal tournament 1999 had to be a mod
- UT99 the mod is called BotPack and therefore it is Unreal98 with improved and modified Engine
Conclusion Unreal tournament is Unreal98 hidden by the BotPack mod
In the original Unreal98 already contains Deathmatch, TDM, Darkmatch
UT2k4 was an institution. Used to have my own clan with this game.
Really great video brotha !!
Crazy they are getting delisted luckily I bought them on steam already - except 2k3 which was never available on steam
By far my favourite was 2003 :/
But yea I played it very extensively even on the ESL. I don’t recall switching to 2004
Yea ut99 we played so much on lan.. basically every weekend. 40% UT 40% cs beta 20% q3a
Its sad that Unreal Tournament is dead. I loved 3 and 4
I still think 2003 had the coolest theme, it reminded me of the FOX NFL games. haha
I dont really understand why they delisted these games. I mean, they realize these games can still be played offline, right? Wouldn't having these games for sale make Epic more money?
UTX and UT2k4 were one of the greatest.
the fact that UT3 sucked so hard is because it tried to take itself too serious, it followed the trend of making all its maps dark and gritty like its going through puberty and telling mom to frick off.
the onslaught and assault mode in UT2004 were absolutely amazing, despite the stilted lghtning engine and whackiness of the over-all engine making things feel "unreal?"
while UT3 was definetly a graphical update to 2004, it barely felt like unreal touurnament. it was slower-paced, everything was gritty, the story tried to take itself serious while making no sense. UTX had a story but it was brief, short and made at least some sense.
the evil liandri corproration had a violence problem with its laborers in the furthest sectors of its expansive empire and tried to quell internal rage and bloodlust by simulating deathmatch battles between its laborforce. liandri then figured out "wow, people pay money to watch that shit?" and then they did make people pay to watch that shit because people loved to watch skaarj warriors tear apart some gothic looking harlequin thingy screeching "TRY TURNING THE SAFETY OFF!"
i miss 2004 and they took them all out all the servers. Nice going epic u just got rid of one of my favorite games of all time.
ohhh! i always wondered if that old-ass game had anything to do with the Unreal Engine, or it was just a coincidence! thank you for the knowledge
11:17 main issue with 3 is lack of content.
There's so many fan made maps you can download that you wouldn't even play through all of them. There's hundreds for just death match.
UT99 is the GOAT!
UT2004 is still tons of fun to play, I'll load up into the game and play through the campaign every few months
Very sad to see my childhood favorite games slowly dying off one by one